Nokia Siemens Networks is a brand that many people aren’t familiar with, and for good reason too. They make infrastructure equipment. When was the last time you met your friend in a bar and talked about the key differences between Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks RAN hardware? Exactly, it doesn’t happen. Operators buy infrastructure gear, not people. Quite often an operator will go with the company who can quote them the cheapest price to cover X amount of people with Y quality of service in Z amount of time. Most infrastructure vendors typically don’t offer consumer products, but that’s recently changed. Huawei and ZTE, both from China, make smartphones, feature phones, USB modems, routers, pretty much damn near everything you’d need to get your Facebook and Twitter on. NSN wants a piece of that action, so today they’re introducing their first 3 products that will start putting their logo on a store shelf near you.
The first, arguably the most important, is a 4G LTE USB modem called the “USB-lte 7210”. Unlike other 4G LTE modems, this thing only does TD-LTE, the flavor of 4G LTE that most people associate with one operator: China Mobile. That’s not really a bad thing either since China Mobile has more customers than America has people. The second, a router for your home known as the “CPEi-lte 7212”, takes TD-LTE and outputs it to either WiFi, ethernet, or both. The third, a router you can mount outside in case you can’t get coverage indoors, is called the “CPEo-lte 7210”. All 3 support 2.3 GHz and 2.6 GHz TD-LTE.
While there’s some doubt as to whether you’ll see these outside of China, it’s an important first step. NSN has officially declared themselves as not only interested in entering the consumer space, but selling operators advanced 4G LTE networks and hardware that they can resell to their users.